While speaking to a gathering of his supporters in Brasilia last week, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro made a bizarre claim about Leonardo DiCaprio.
Bolsonaro blamed the actor for the recent Amazon fires, claiming that the DiCaprio paid to have the forest burned down, while offering no evidence to support his allegations.
“DiCaprio is a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money to set the Amazon on fire,” Bolsonaro said.
The president was referencing a number of charities that are being investigated by his administration, but there is still no evidence that these organizations had anything to do with the fires.
In a statement to the Associated Press on Friday, DiCaprio said that he has not funded any of the groups that are being investigated, but says that they are still worthy of support.
“While worthy of support, we did not fund the organizations targeted. The future of these irreplaceable ecosystems is at stake and I am proud to stand with the groups protecting them,” DiCaprio’s statement read.
Then on Saturday, DiCaprio made a statement on Instagram saying:
“At this time of crisis for the Amazon, I support the people of Brazil working to save their natural and cultural heritage. They are an amazing, moving and humbling example of the commitment and passion needed to save the environment. The future of these irreplaceable ecosystems is at stake and I am proud to stand with the groups protecting them. While worthy of support, we did not fund the organizations targeted. I remain committed to supporting the Brazilian indigenous communities, local governments, scientists, educators and general public who are working tirelessly to secure the Amazon for the future of all Brazilians.”
Bolsonaro and many members of his administration claim that nonprofit organizations intentionally set fires in the region to gain sympathy from potential donors. However, there is much more evidence to suggest that these fires were set by cattle ranchers and miners who have been encouraged to clear native lands for industrial use.
Bolsonaro campaigned on promises to allow corporations to pillage indigenous lands and since coming into office, his administration has significantly scaled back environmental protections, essentially giving a green light to loggers, miners, and ranchers to violently expel native tribes from their lands and destroy the local ecosystem.
Furthermore, documents leaked from the Brazilian government show that the current administration planned on building infrastructure projects through the Amazon as a way of pushing back against international pressure to put protections on the forest.
Social media, as is the new normal, has erupted in memes…
Earlier this year, Bolsonaro had another high-profile Twitter fight with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who sent an alarmist “our house is burning” tweet about the Amazon fires during a G7 event in France. Bolsonaro responded by accusing him of using an outdated photo of the Amazon and exhibiting a colonialist attitude towards Brazil.
Biden In Resurfaced Viral Clip: Recounts Kids Petting His “Hairy Legs” & Jumping On His Lap
Just over a couple months out from the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and Joe Biden’s campaign continues to implode at an accelerated rate — and perhaps his mind too — as his officially named ‘No Malarkey!’ Iowa bus tour continues (it’s not The Onion, that’s really the campaign slogan).
And now a ‘rediscovered’ viral video clip of Biden rambling at a previous speaking event is so bizarre and enters a whole new level of creepy that it’s put renewed spotlight on the question of Crazy Uncle Joe’s potential senility. It simply has to be seen to be believed. Surrounded by children, he goes on a free-flowing monologue about his hairy legs and how kids used to rub them to watch the “blond” hair pop up again. What?!?…
“The kids used to come up and rub my legs. And then jump on my lap. I loved the kids jumping on my lap.”
I thought people were joking or it was doctored. But there is video of Joe Biden discussing kids petting his leg hair and sitting on his lap. 😳 “Weird and creepy, 2020.” pic.twitter.com/1UGNZ3u4Yk
He then randomly transitions to learning “all about roaches” but quickly gets the story back on track:
“So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap and I’ve loved kids jumping on my lap.”
“The men, who are now all men… and they’re all guys at the time, they’re all good men,” he nonsensically continues.
It’s a new to surface segment from the prior epic Corn Pop episode he recounted about his time as a life guard at a public pool in Delaware in the 1960s.
Biden’s story of the unbelievable encounter with a gang leader named ‘Corn Pop’ had previously surfaced and drove headlines back in September, but apparently the even weirder hairy legs and “I loved kids jumping on my lap” segment was little commented on at the time.
Nice to know Biden’s stands on hairy legs, roaches, and kids jumping on his lappic.twitter.com/OIW6RWmB2d
Meanwhile, things in Iowa are now getting weird as well, per the NY Post on Saturday:
She must have looked good enough to eat.
A jovial Joe Biden nipped his wife Jill’s finger onstage Saturday at a rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as she introduced him at the first stop of an eight-day, 800-mile road trip through the first-to-caucus state.
“Friendly reminder not to kink shame Joe Biden for suckin on his wife’s fingie :),” one journalist, Nicole Russell observed on Twitter.
Well at least it was his own wife’s finger he nibbled on, and not a campaign staffer’s or young supporter’s or a random stranger’s.
The more local campaign events Biden speaks at, the more likely it is that we’re about to witness weirder and weirder behavior from the Democratic front runner.
According Bloomberg Biden is in danger of a “humiliating loss” in Iowa due to a “poorly organized operation, but clearly judging by the above off-the-cuff clip that might be the least of his worries:
Joe Biden risks a humiliating third- or fourth-place finish in Iowa early next year, according to nearly a dozen senior Democrats in the state who attribute the prospect to what they see as a poorly organized operation that has failed to engage with voters and party leaders.
With fewer than 100 days until the Feb. 3 caucuses, Biden is failing to spend the time with small groups of voters and party officials that Iowans expect and his campaign’s outreach has been largely ineffective, according to 11 senior Democrats in the state. That could send Biden to a crippling loss behind Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, who have highly organized campaigns in Iowa, said the Democrats, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the campaign.
And action needs to be taken say Democrat insiders:
“I think it’s fair to say if action isn’t taken soon, you’re going to find that a person who was 7 or 14 points behind Biden will be breathing down his neck or actually ahead of him,” said Kurt Meyer, chairman of the Mitchell County Democratic Party. “There’s still time because the caucuses are not on Oct. 27, but action needs to be taken.”
CTAs Caught In A Tug Of War Between Bonds And Stocks As Year-End Looms
While the jury is still out whether the modest economic rebound that took place at the start of September – just in time to crush the value/growth trade – and appeared to fizzle by mid-November, when the “jitters” returned to virtually every asset class except stocks which have continued to ramp to new all time highs …
… is over, and a new wave of economic uncertainty and/or deflation has set in, remains to be seen.
Which is why in the absence of definitive macro trends, traders will be looking at the next best, and most important thing: what CTAs will do, especially as traditional year-end market patterns begin to take hold next week, now that the majority of hedge funds have been incrementally ramping up their risk-taking in a scramble to catch up to the market, and with optimism toward US-China talks still strong.
So what do positional indicators tell us?
According to Nomura’s Masanari Takada, amid the ongoing market euphoria – a consequence of the Fed’s QE which has pushed the Fed’s balance sheet and stocks higher for 7 of the past 8 weeks…
… it is now high time to look more cautiously at the steady accumulation of long positions on US equity futures (S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, DJIA) by trend-following CTAs that is one of the factors behind the strength of the US equity market (perhaps the explanation is as simple as that CTA buy if the Fed’s balance sheet rises, and vice versa).
Looking at the action in the last days of last week, CTAs were in wait-and-see mode, but Nomura expects them to continue to lean toward buying, especially since their long positions have already reached the levels last seen in mid-October 2018, and they have been steadily hiking their leverage ratios (re-leveraging). Of course, if CTA demand overextends, Nomura warns that the upward momentum in US stocks could lead to an overheating – assuming of course that the last 100 or so S&P points were not just that – “and markets are then likely to start viewing day-trading moves by fleet-footed investors with trepidation.” Meanwhile, a modest cool-off in stocks, one that doesn’t bring the S&P 500 down past around 3,100 (breakeven for CTAs’ most recent positions), could conversely spur dip-buying by investors that have fallen slightly behind this trend.
What about bonds? As we wrote three weeks ago, when bond yields peaked just shy of 2%, that’s the time that CTAs stopped selling Treasurys, and sure enough, 10Y yields promptly dropped by over 20 bps. Fast forward to today, when 10yr TSY yields can be found around 1.76%, a level that Nomura says is “a key strategic line for CTAs”, as it represents the cost of cumulative net buying since June.
As a reminder, CTAs have already unwound nearly 80% of their long UST (TY) positions, and it is more difficult for them to unwind these positions in the interest of avoiding losses with yields at 1.7-1.9%. If anything, if trade war fears re-emerge and deflationary worries bubble up to the surface again, it is more likely that CTAs will start buying here again, potentially sending 10Y yields south of 1.50% in a hurry.
Of course, position adjustments within the range of what can be justified by actual market conditions cannot be ruled out, but as Nomura notes, there now seems to be little risk that CTAs will unilaterally sell off their long positions unless 10yr UST yields were to break above 1.9%.
In short, with just one calendar month left in the year, and the decade, what happens next may depend on the tug of war between equity and bond CTAs, and which group ends up prevailing.
And since the outcome of that particular duel is still unknown, we will instead shift our perspective a bit and look at cross-asset seasonal patterns for the end of this year and the beginning of the New Year.
Here, we highlight Nomura’s calculations for the average performance in December and January since 2009 for investment in equity, FX, and 10yr yields (in all cases assuming that positions are held from the first trading day through the last trading day). For the 10 major asset classes, the Japanese bank compared a total of 55 patterns for building buy & hold or long/short positions.
Among major equity markets, EM equity indices such as MSCI-EM and KOSPI tend to maintain upward momentum in December and January. In contrast, indices such as the Nikkei 225 and CSI 300 tend to rise in December but reverse in January. The S&P is modestly in the positive category, with strong seasonals for both December and January.
In FX, NZD cross pairs tend to move in the same direction in both December and January. In contrast, EUR/JPY and NZD/NOK tend to rise in December and then reverse in January, while NOK/SEK tends to fall in December and then reverse and rise in January. In either case, many currency pairs maintain momentum from December through January better than equity or rates.
Finally looking at 10yr yields, it appears that 10yr UST yields and yields in the majority of other countries tend to rise in December and then fall in January. Compared with equity and FX, 10yr yields show a clear tendency to revert to the mean from the end of the year through the beginning of the next.
In light of this, and until CTAs show their cards how they plan on trading the balance of the year, Nomura concludes that it seems that an effective strategy for targeting momentum effects from December through January could be to build long/short positions in, for example, HK10yr/AU10yr.
Most of those turning up at our border and applying for refuge will surely be deported, insists the president’s hardhearted official spokesman. Oh wait. That was Obama spokesman Josh Earnest, referring in 2014 to unaccompanied minors showing up at the southern border: “It’s unlikely that most of those kids will qualify. . . . They will be sent back.”
Still, the current administration’s fans gallingly argue that failing to deport immigration offenders will only encourage more to come: “There is nothing humanitarian in tacitly encouraging tens of thousands of children to risk their lives, often at the hands of cutthroat smugglers, to enter this country illegally.”
Oh wait, that was the Washington Post editorializing in July 2014. As the paper went on to note approvingly: “During the past 14 years, under presidents Bush and Obama, the United States has sent more than 9,000 additional Border Patrol agents to the Southwest frontier, more than doubling the force there. It has built more than 600 miles of fencing; installed almost 12,000 underground sensors; and deployed scores of aircraft, drones and boats.”
When you put it that way, Mr. Trump’s wall sounds merely incremental. Mr. Trump may not be less cynical than other politicians, but he layers on less hypocrisy. This offends.
Proposed Solutions
WSJ author Holman Jenkins, Jr. Solution: Start by welcoming any migrant prepared to post a refundable $5,000 border deposit. Overnight this would drain profits from the people traffickers. The money could be used to sponsor English instruction and other programs to help newcomers. By making the sum refundable, workers would receive an incentive to return home with their skills and capital to help their own countries.
Australia’s Solution: According to Emigrate Australia, Australia accepts skilled migrants under the age of 45, with a profession on the Australian skills shortage list. Australia also accepts permanent residency by investment. That means, you need to have enough money.
Australia’s solution is far stricter than the proposal of Jenkins.
One Democrat on Right Track
Steve Bullock, Governor of Montana, and Democrat 2020 candidate has the right idea:
“We’ve got 100,000 people showing up at the border right now. If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.”
I have no doubt that conditions are miserable and detentions are up under Trump.
But why?
Assessing the Blame
The current Democrat House will not fund the wall nor fund money for more detention centers.Child misery servers the Democrats well in this election campaign. The more misery the better. And Democrats openly encouraged migrants to come.
Trump is also to hugely to blame. On January 24, 2018, Democrats offered Trump $20 billion for a wall in return for amnesty. That was a fantastic deal in Trump’s lap that the alleged king of the deal turned down. For details, please see TTF: Totally Trump’s Fault.
So, here were are back at square one where the typical policies apply.
Free Stuff = More Votes
Democrats generally operate on the principle that free stuff buys votes, country be damned. Governor Bullock was an exception.
Politics aside, here’s the fundamental economic truth: Open borders and massive amounts of free stuff are completely incompatible.
But free stuff offers buy votes. And demand for free stuff is unlimited. It’s a guaranteed train wreck.
Dalio & Tudor Jones Warn: “We Will Kill Each Other” If Our Broken Economic System Isn’t Fixed
Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio and Tudor Investments’ Paul Tudor Jones joined Yahoo Finance for the 2nd annual Greenwich Investment Forum earlier this month.
Speaking directly after Connecticut Gov. New Lamont, with whom Dalio is working to bolster Connecticut’s schools via a $100 million gift – the largest charitable gift the state has ever received, PTJ and Dalio largely focused their “Fireside Chat” on the flaws of Fed policy, the dangers of America’s ballooning budget deficit, and the steps that must be take to “stop us from killing each other” in a violent revolution, as Dalio warned.
PTJ spoke first, starting with a few words about President Trump, praising him as “the greatest salesman” to ever enter the American political arena. After all, didn’t Trump convince the Republican Party – once the party of fiscal piety – that 5% budget deficits 10 years into an economic rebound are necessary to protect the economy. Similarly, didn’t he also convince the Fed – “through great moral suasion” – that returning to real negative rates with unemployment at 50-year lows was a necessity?
Both Dalio and PTJ agree that, while clearly stimulative in the short-term (obviously just take a look at the S&P 500), these decisions will set up the US economy for one of the most punishing downturns in history, which is why PTJ always laughs when Jerome Powell is quizzed about financial conditions and whether he sees bubbles anywhere. Because at this point, the whole market is a bubble.
“Clearly, the low interest rate policy we’re pursuing is creating an excess and that excess is in our public deficits. Which, at the current pace, in less than ten years we will have exceeded the threshold where Greece had its issues,” PTJ said.
And when we look abroad, the full scope of this heady “fiscal-monetary mix” becomes even more obvious.
“I look at our fiscal-monetary mix, it’s the most stimulative that I’ve ever seen – again, economically adjusted – no wonder the stock market is at new highs. It’s literally the most conducive environment – certainly in the short run – for economic growth and strength that I’ve ever seen. You add on that an 11% budget deficit in China, the second largest economy, and 3%.”
Dalio jumps in: Today, the number of companies producing earnings is the lowest since the dot-com bubble because “companies can sell dreams rather than earnings.” That’s thanks to the $15 trillion sloshing around the financial system that has been injected by central banks
“Because the world is looking for yield, companies can sell dreams rather than earnings. The number of companies that produce earnings is the lowest since the dot-com bubble in terms of their need because you can sell a dream.”
“As a result of the accumulation of the money at the top and technology we have a situation where, naturally, those who have a lot of money also have a lot of money in credit…but it doesn’t trickle down. And as a result, we have a situation with a large wealth gap.”
Dalio then moved on to highlighting his “1930s” hypothesis. There are three things that exist today that haven’t existed since the 1930s: A wealth gap that’s driving populism on the left and right, the absence of effective monetary policy, and an emerging world power (China) challenging an existing world power (the US).
All of this is happening at a time when, according to Dalio, the current dollar-centric global reserve system is nearing its end.
“In my opinion, we’re near the end, in the late stages, of our reserve currency system – it’s a fiat monetary system. Not only do we have negative rates, but we’re going to have much bigger deficits…and that’s not half the story. Because the larger story is the unfunded liabilities…those are pension liabilities and debt liabilities.”
War can take several different forms, as most Americans are no doubt aware at this point: As Dalio explained, there’s a trade war, a technology war, a geopolitical war and there could be a capital war.
And the US isn’t in a great place to carry on this fight. The situation will be even worse when the cycle turns and we’re plunged into a punishing economic downturn.
It’s not just the budget hole, there are also pension shortfalls and other obligations that the federal government must backstop: “We have a lot of IOUs that are either going to be funded by tax increases or spending cuts.”
If we don’t find a way to fix the system and fix wealth inequality, bad things are going to happen. But Dalio insists that increasing the size and distribution of the pie is still possible.
“The system doesn’t work, it’s gone mad, then the reason the system is broken is because it’s not an equal opportunity system. There are justifiable complaints about education…it needs to be reformed in a way that works better – we can increase the size of the pie in the same way that you can divide it better.”
PTJ grabbed the microphone next to share a few thoughts on MMT and some of the Dems who are running in the primary. Jones said MMT reminds him of the fight to legalize marijuana because 30 years, it would have been dismissed as a crackpot theory…but now it’s being taken seriously.
“Twenty years ago, Japan medicinalized it by implementing a form of it with the BoJ…now we’re at the point where it’s so wildly accepted that we sugar-coat it and put it in gummy-bear form. And it’s this wildly accepted next stage that there’s a problem. The typical recession means the budget deficit should increase by 10% to 30%.”
According to an internal poll at Jones’s firm, if Trump wins reelection, the S&P 500 could hit 3,500. But if Warren is elected, we could go as low as 2,400 to 2,500.
Biden and Buttigieg represent a middle ground: with the S&P 500 likely reversing some of its recent gains, but only enough to bring us back down to like 2,700, around where we started 2019.
Still, when we look at the biggest factor influencing markets, PTJ insists it’s not markets, but the 5% budget deficit in the US, that has caused US stocks to outperform.
“Clearly, asset prices today whether it’s US stocks or its interest rates or its the dollar it’s all priced off of, in my opinion, a 5% budget deficit with this incredibly overly stimulative fiscal policy combined with overly stimulating monetary policy is creating this US exceptionalism that, one day, like if we normalized our deficit to levels more popular in Europe, we’d see completely different valuations for the sock market…the dollar…etc.”
After a brief discussion of his charity efforts in the state, Dalio said that much of the source of inequality lies in the public education system. We need to re-engineered public education in a way that promotes more wide-spread economic performance, and that might involve letting the academics and policy wonks who are at the forefront take the reins.
But the stakes are so high, that whatever the cost of reform, the US will likely want to pay, because if we don’t, soon we’re “going to kill each other.”
“If you don’t fix it, you’re going to have a revolution…and you’re going to chase all the capitalists away.”
The search for one of the most legendary boats of human history has made a potential breakthrough as multiple teams of scientists have zeroed in on a curious ship-shaped rise on Mt. Ararat in Turkey. The story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood that covered the earth, echoed in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, has long fascinated archaeologists who have wondered if remnants of the boat are still to be found.
Satellite images, radiocarbon dating, and most recently, 3D scans of the site known as Durupınar have all given hope to researchers that solid evidence of the Ark may soon be found. “It’s a man-made object and it’s a ship form,” computer engineer and biblical researcher Andrew Jones told WZTV,
As per the description of Genesis 8:4, “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat,” researchers have investigated the site, which lies around 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) above sea level and was first identified by a Turkish cartographer in 1959.
The location of the real Noah’s Ark may have been confirmed by relic-hunters in a remote mountain range in eastern Turkey, with experts claiming images “show the entire ship buried underground.”
The Durupınar formation is about 18 miles (29 kilometers) south of the summit of Mt. Ararat, which reaches up to 16,854 feet. After its discovery was announced in 1959, it generated enthusiasm among ark seekers around the world, including Tennessee biblical researcher Ron Wyatt. Today, the site is labeled Nuhun Gemisi (Noah’s Ship) by mapmakers and continues to generate interest.
“We’re not going to find a sign that says, ‘made by Noah and sons,’ but what other ship would it be on the side of a hill at 6,500-foot elevation in the mountains of Ararat?” Andrew Jones told WZTV. In the Bible, God tells Noah very specifically how to build the Ark and these details have aided researchers in their quest.
Genesis 6:15 states, “This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.” These dimensions, as per the best guesses archaeologists have made about the length of a “cubit,” would yield a ship that was 540 feet long, 37.5 feet high, and 75 feet wide.
This size corresponds to the strange, seemingly buried object found in the rise at Durupınar, according to ark hunters. While in previous attempts to find evidence they produced wooden samples from the site that were dated to 4,800 years old with radiocarbon dating, they are now trying to produce an image of what’s buried inside the mound.
Using a technique called “electrical resistivity,” Jones and others on his team have been trying to produce a quality 3-D image to counter skeptics.
“If you shoot an electrical current below the ground and it hits a pocket of air, that has a different type of conductivity versus something like water or rock,” Jones explains. “So, the software can interpret the signals coming back and create a 3-D image.”
Besides the dimensions, which appear to correspond to the ark specifications, Jones claims to have seen other details that match the design. As Genesis 6:16 says, “Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.
Jones claims that images have shown just this. They have seen “[a] perfectly preserved hull below the ground. Petrified, solid, hull of a ship and three different layers, just like The Bible says.” The next step would be to get authorization from Turkish authorities to start excavations.
Besides the evidence of the Ark itself, researchers seeking to prove that Noah’s story has basis in archaeological evidence have also looked at the flood itself. A group of researchers led by British archaeologist Chris Turney found solid evidence for a flood that covered the land between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean over 8,300 years ago.
“We looked at all the earliest data on farming in Europe and we found a little bit of farming in Greece and the Balkans just before the flood,” Turney explained to Reuters.
“When the flood happened, farming seemed to stop but it was re-established a generation later across Europe.”
The findings seem to indicate a large number of people displaced from their homes by the waters.
For those that lived in this part of the Fertile Crescent, “it would have seemed like the whole world had flooded,” Turney said.
Malta PM To Step Down Related To Car Bombing Of Journalist Dubbed “One-Woman WikiLeaks”
She had been mysteriously assassinated on Oct. 16, 2017 via car bomb in Malta’s most high profile crime in recent history. The 53-year old mother of three who led the Panama papers revelations and whose blog posts regularly had more readers than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers, Daphne Caruana Galizia, had been commonly described as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” for being“a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures” in the EU’s smallest member state.
And now her case and prior prolific reporting has brought down Malta’s prime minister and top officials within his cabinet, as the AFP reports “Joseph Muscat will step down on January 18, party sources told AFP Saturday, following mounting criticism of his response to the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.”
Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and a memorial photograph of slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The slain journalist’s family had accused Muscat of playing “judge, jury, and executioner in an assassination investigation that so far implicates three of his closest colleagues.” Recent protests have rocked the small island Mediterranean nation and kept the case in international headlines as authorities have made progress in unraveling the murder, in a shocking Hollywood-scenario crime that increasingly points straight to the prime minister’s inner circle and business connections.
She made many powerful enemies and was subject of death threats over the years, also after she directly accused Prime Minister Muscat himself of corruption, when she revealed a string of secret Panama-based companies tied to Maltese politicians that served as fronts for various illegal schemes on her blog, Running Commentary, which had been frequently featured and amplified by WikiLeaks.
The circumstances of her death immediately invoked popular anger at top Maltese officials accused of being complicit given that personal police protection had been suspiciously pulled just before her death. As CNN describes:
Caruana Galizia died on October 16, 2017, when her rented Peugeot 108 was detonated by a remote control device on a country lane near her home in Bidnija, Malta. Her son Matthew Caruana Galizia, told CNN that she was driving a rental car at the time, out of fear that someone might target her car in an attempt to kill her.
Saturday’s announcement that Muscat will step down follows his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, along with two top ministers resigning their posts amid accusations they were involved in the killing.
Image vie Reuters: Forensic experts walk in a field after a powerful bomb blew up a car killing investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Bidnija.
Schembri was arrested Tuesday but subsequently released Thursday after another alleged conspirator in Caruana Galizia’s assassination, energy and tourism tycoon Yorgen Fenech, identified the chief of staff as the mastermind behind the killing, per the AFP:
Fenech has identified Schembri as the mastermind behind Caruana Galizia’s 2017 car bomb killing, according to sources.
Schembri was arrested on Tuesday, but his release on Thursday sparked accusations of a cover-up.
Muscat, who has vowed to resign if links were found between himself and the murder, said Friday he would remain in power, telling reporters he wanted “this case to be closed under my watch”.
Part of the ‘cover-up’ accusations center on the prime minister’s refusal to give Fenech immunity in return for his testimony, who’s thought to have crucial information that would expose all involved.
Protests in front of government buildings in Valletta have persisted over the past month-and-a-half. Image source: The Times of Malta.
The victim’s family believes Muscat’s long-time chief of staff is being protected from such potentially damning testimony, also in a bid to save Muscat himself from incrimination.
Muscat came to power in 2013 after securing the biggest majority in 60 years and pressure for him to step down has been intense over the past week, but even with the latest announcement of his planned departure, whether it will ultimately happen is anything but certain.
Last week I went through just some of the highlights as to why Russia is becoming a destination for global capital.
For years it’s been a little lonely out here banging on about how well the Russian state headed by Vladimir Putin has navigated an immense campaign by the West to marginalize and/or isolate Russia from the world economy.
But that is changing rapidly. And 2020 will likely be the year the New Cold War begins to end. And it starts with Europe. In recent weeks there have been a number of moves made on both sides to end the economic isolation of Russia by Europe.
As always, however, it begins politically. French President Emmanuel Macron speaking at a press conference before 70th Anniversary NATO Summit in London no less, made it clear that he no longer wants the EU positioning itself as an adversary of Russia or China.
Standing next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Macron put a further down payment that he is looking to replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the person setting the tone for European Foreign Policy.
“NATO is a collective defense organization, but against what or against who? Who is our common enemy? We need to clarify that. And it is a very strategic question,” he told reporters at a press conference in Paris on Nov. 28.
“Sometimes I hear some saying that it is Russia or China, our enemy. Is it the purpose of the Atlantic Alliance to identify one or the other as our enemies? I don’t think so. Our joint enemy, clearly within the Alliance, is terrorism that’s struck our countries.”
Macron said that NATO needs “a common definition of terrorism, of who the terrorist groups are and how to act in coordination against them.” He said that “the absence of dialogue with Russia” did not make the European continent safer and that he wants to “clarify our relationship with Russia.”
“We want a lucid, robust, and demanding dialogue with Russia, with neither naivety nor complacency,” he said.
The big shift here is Macron signaling out that NATO needs to shift its focus away from Russia and China and focus on threat of terrorism. There are at least two reasons for him doing this.
First, this aligns Macron with Putin on where the focus of security concerns should be. Putin has been banging this drum for years, certainly since his game-changing speech at the 2015 U.N. General Assembly two days before he sent Russian troops into Syria.
These words more than the others are music to Putin’s ears and a complete needle-scratch for the foreign policy orthodoxy on K Street and in Vauxhall. As they have been the architects of this new Cold War with Russia which has altered the landscape of EU economic progress for the past five years.
At some point the ‘frozen conflicts’ that Macron mentions in his remarks have to thaw because, as he rightly points out, it has been Europe that has been made less safe by U.S. foreign policy imperatives — ending the INF Treaty, freezing all diplomacy with Russia, etc.
So, Macron is prepping the table for his upcoming Normandy format talks with Germany, Russia and Ukraine on how to end the conflict in Ukraine.
Reality has seen in that Crimea is now off the table for NATO and so are the eastern breakaway provinces of the Donbass. I’ve maintained for years that Russia was always playing the game of attrition in Ukraine, winning by waiting for the EU and Ukrainians to tire of the war and eventually sue for peace.
Moreover, the economic defense of Russia that Putin mounted supported this policy. By doing the unthinkable in 2014, floating the ruble and allowing it to fall, he laid the foundation for today’s victory.
Make no mistake, this speech by Macron is a victory for Russia and, by extension, the world. Because Macron, Merkel and Putin have all the tools in their grasp to now push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to fully implement Ukraine’s responsibilities under the Minsk agreements.
This would never happen under former President Petro Poroshenko, who is a long-standing U.S. asset and who openly bankrupted Ukraine during his tenure even more than his predecessor Viktor Yanukovich, no mean feat that.
Secondly, Macron’s comments underscore his desire to raise a transnational EU army and his comments are a direct statement that he wants the two security infrastructures to have separate mandates. It’s clear Macron doesn’t want Europe’s security to depend on the U.S. any longer.
And I’m sure that this idea gets a sympathetic ear from President Trump. The problem, of course, is that that idea isn’t popular with anyone else in the U.S. Deep State. Hence the push to create a chimeric impeachment process to remove him from power, or, at least, neuter him completely.
On the latter point they’ve nearly succeeded.
To Macron, NATO should deal with terrorism, downgrading its importance and paving the way for ending it in the future, while the EU army is under the control of the European Commission, which to a globalist like Macron is the epitome of ‘sovereignty.’
Macron, with these remarks as a prologue of what he will argue for at the NATO Summit, is telling the world Europe is done paying the price for the U.S.’s Cold War with Russia.
He’s also letting everyone know that 2020 will see the end of the sanctions in exchange for ending the conflict in Ukraine and re-opening the floodgates of European investment into Russia.
This puts paid everything I talked about in last week’s blog and which was also picked up by Alexander Mercouris at The Duran who is one of the very few analysts who understood Russia’s strategy and what the end-game would look like.
This is welcome news in Germany who absolutely want the sanctions lifted which will put Merkel under even more pressure to lift them. Putin has already made the moves necessary for Merkel to save face here — offering a new gas transit contract for Ukraine, handing back the ships seized in the Kerch Strait incident, prisoner exchange, etc.
A lot will ride on Putin’s upcoming meeting with Zelensky. There is so much coming together for the first half of December that by year-end we could be staring a very different geopolitical landscape in Europe.
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Sunday marks World AIDS Day, which aims to promote awareness of the disease and mourn those who have died from it. The event came into existence in 1988 and it has been widely observed by health officials, governments and non-governmental organizations since then.
The good news is that the number of deaths from the HIV/AIDS pandemic has fallen. In 2018, there were 770,000 AIDS-related deaths, down from 1.7 million in 2005.
According to new data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and World Health Organization, there were 71 new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 people in Russia last year. Ukraine came a distant second with 37 while third-placed Belarus had 26. The lowest rates of new diagnoses per 100,000 people were recorded in Bosnia and Herzegovina (0.3), Slovakia (1.3) and Slovenia (1.9).
The US and NATO operate the largest military infrastructure in Africa with thirty-four bases (some secret) and thirty new US military or NATO construction projects underway in Africa spanning four countries…
The Warsaw Pact may no longer exist, but by contrast the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is expanding its perceived role – the enforcement of western interest – especially in resource-rich Africa.
NATO’s expansion in Africa is intended to assert western corporate influence, where Macron’s France apparently wishes to usurp Germany as the major influential European power.
But corporate interest is not the only driver for NATO’s war in Africa since the Russian Federation has significant ambitions there too. Russian non-governmental private military contractors or ‘Chastnaya Voennaya Kompaniya’ include:
The list above may seem impressive but does not compare with the list of western private military contractors operating in the Middle East and Afghanistan, which have existed far longer, are larger and better funded, and in many instances directly employed by the states they serve — including and especially the United States. By contrast, these Russian contractors operate on a small scale, are flexible, and employ a wide range of nationalities and skills.
Russian Chastnaya Voennaya Kompaniya (Private Military Contractors, or PMC) are correctly called ‘mercenaries’ because they may not, by law, act on behalf of the Russian Federation’s government. It is clear too that these PMC groups are mainly employed by corporate interests where those corporate interests may conflict with Western corporate interests.
Regardless, the Neoliberal Clinton-backed magazine Foreign Policy has already pronounced the demise of PMC Wagner and related Russian military contractor groups in Hauer’s hit piece The Rise and Fall of a Russian Mercenary Army.
Foreign Policy’s article appeared on October 6th, 2019, precisely the same day that Mozambique announced Exxon’s success in obtaining a liquid natural gas contract in Cabo Del Gado province worth $30Bn USD. No doubt Foreign Policy’s inspiration to publish Hauer’s troubled view of private Russian military contractors was based on the outcome of Exxon’s battle with Russian gas giant Gazprom for the contract.
And trouble it is. Mozambique nearly crushed mining giant Rio Tinto with its Riversdale coal scandal when Mozambique refused to allow coal transport down the Zambezi. And Rio Tinto is not the only corporate giant to come to grief in Mozambique. Mozambique has a major IMF debt problem too with widespread poverty and insurrection in parts of the country, where one of the most troubled regions is Cabo del Gado — source of Mozambique’s liquified natural gas.
Back when Gazprom was still barely in the running for the Cabo del Gado liquid natural gas contract, Mozambique’s government decided that drug-fueled takfiri terrorists roaming the province needed to go, and opted for the lowest-bid security contractor to clean up there.
The Mozambique security service bid resulted in the hire of PMC Wagner which quickly found their police action mired in exceedingly difficult terrain, opposed by anarcho-psychotics far more dangerous and characteristic of drug-crazed homicidal maniacs than of ISIL Jihadi terrorists.
Then by November of this year Wagner’s Cabo del Gado contract turned to tragedy when the Moscow Times reported the death of seven Russian mercenaries there. According to one source PMC Wagner is no longer operating in the province.
Russian Chastnaya Voennaya Kompaniya contractors have been active in the Central African Republic (CAR) as well, alleged to be protecting diamond mines there while negotiating with rebels in control of the Ndassima gold fields.
Three Russian filmmakers were tragically killed near there while investigating Wagner’s activities in the CAR at the time, provoking a western conspiracy theory that the reporters were killed based on their investigatory work. The truth however is far more mundane, that the reporters crossed a bridge too far in rebel territory without adequate armed protection.
One further but unconfirmed report claims that a Russian PMC contractor is missing in action in Somalia while two hundred PMC contractors have recently arrived in Libya. Meanwhile more than 1,100 Wagner Group contractors are operating in both Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. That is pursuant to Wagner and related PMC groups expanding in Libya, Cameroon, Uganda, Angola, and the Sahel… all to the great consternation of the US military of course.
Whether or not the above reports are exaggerated is irrelevant. The overall picture is certain to be misunderstood in the west. Russia’s intent in Africa – whatever it may be – is certainly as misunderstood now as it was leading up to the Suez crisis of 1956. That crisis led to a dangerous and pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Nasser’s Egypt hatched in a crackpot conspiracy involving Israel, France, and Britain.
The potential parallel to Suez in 1956 re NATO versus Russia in Africa today is not altogether preposterous. Because there is another side to the coin in what appears to be a nascent Russian Federation attempt at taming Africa for its own — and perhaps China’s! — corporate interests, being the toxic effect of AFRICOM/ NATO and its abject mismanagement of resources and subversion of the African right to progressive state self-determination.
That’s because the United States and NATO operate the largest military infrastructure in Africa with thirty-four bases (some secret) and thirty new US military or NATO construction projects underway in Africa spanning four countries.
The US military has more sites in Niger – five, including Niamey, Ouallam, Arlit, Maradi, and a secret base in Dirkou – than all other countries combined in Western Africa.
Chebelley drone base in Djibouti is the largest drone base in the world where the US can strike any target in the Sahel or for that matter Iran. And AFRICOM is building a larger base, Niger Air Base 201 in Agadez, capable of striking Algeria or any location in the Sahel region while the US operates a secret drone base in Tunisia (Sidi Ahmed) now opposed by president Qays Sayed (Kais Saied).
There are five more bases in Somalia including secret bases supporting AFRICOM’s ‘Lightning Brigade’ also known as the Danab Advanced Infantry Brigade. Now guess who is training the Danab? Private US military contractors of course, Bancroft Global Development.
Kenya sports four more US military bases including Manda Bay and Mombasa, where the Manda bay base has consistently launched US drone strikes against Somalia, Yemen, and Iraq. There are three more secret US/NATO base locations located along the Libyan coast to carry out drone strikes as far-ranging as Pakistan.
Then there is Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti where approximately 4,000 US and NATO personnel are stationed. Camp Lemonnier is claimed to be the ‘only permanent US base in Africa’ – perhaps because so many new US/NATO bases are under construction while many of the rest are secret or simply addressed by some arcane acronym known only to the military.
Cameroon, Mali, and Chad also host what the US military calls ‘contingency locations’ no doubt leveraged by NATO in its rather lame attempt to control the Sahel. They include Garoua drone base, Douala, and Salak … bases which train private military contractors and track US drone strikes versus the immortal and indestructible Boko Haram terrorists, of course.
Another secret US base in Chad is the historic site of Faya Largeau. The present operational status of Faya Largeau is of course officially unknown. Gabon’s Libreville location exists to allow US military or NATO quick access for a rapid influx of US forces analogous to the base in Dakar, Senegal, which serves the same strategic purpose.
The list of NATO and US bases in Africa (whether secret or not) might continue on, however hopefully the point has been made that the mighty US/NATO presence in Africa extends far beyond the imagination of even the most devoted follower of military affairs.
That such a behemoth of an operation as represented by the US/NATO military presence in Africa could be seriously undermined by an influx of a small number of lightly armed and under-resourced Russian military contractors is not only laughable, but patently absurd.
To the contrary, what every citizen of the world should truly be concerned about is the bloated, dangerous, deadly, expensive, and destructive influence of NATO and the US military and its Surveillance State in Africa. That’s because the US military is essentially fighting itself – like Shiva the destroyer – the creator of terror.
Algeria, now a progressive forward-looking democracy with a presidential election eminent coming December 12th, 2019, is certainly aware of that. Algeria has deep understanding of western Neo-colonialism and its rule, and has avoided the western-inspired morass of IMF debt.
Algeria presently exports more oil to the rest of the world than Iran. Algeria has a stable economy and low inflation compared to other African nation, and potentially faces a bright future devoid of western meddling. Hence Algeria’s concern that it is surrounded on all sides by the tools of the US hegemon and its interventionism.
In a sense, Algeria provides an example to the rest of Northern Africa where Algeria is pursuing its right to self-determination. Most other nations in Africa cannot because they have already been subverted by the wars-for-resources and profit so favoured by corporate Washington.
The counter to this is of course Russia regardless of how feeble its efforts may seem, and how misunderstood Russia’s goals in Africa may be. But the Russian counter to US/NATO destruction and corruption in Africa may not be as straightforward as the reader imagines.
That’s because our source informs us that Russia is paving the way for China in Africa – a supposition that makes perfect sense. China is not now and has never been a Neo-colonial power. China is only too aware of the destruction wrought by loss of the people’s right to self-determination when China itself was colonized by western interests.
That Russia and China should cooperate in Africa is just as inevitable as Washington’s inability to maintain its self-bloated and expanding militarist behemoth in Africa in perpetuity.
This is the realization to be proved by time and by Washington’s continuing failure to comprehend the grievous and tragic mistakes of its hegemonic past – mistakes that the US is now only building on, exemplified only in part by the rabid anti-Russia hysteria now consuming it. And for the future of Africa… we can only hope.
